Page 35 of Solo

Drew Markham gets to his feet and holds out a hand for me to take. I do, still not able to meet his gaze. When I’m upright once more, he turns away from me and briefly runs the water in the sink.

“Here,” he says, cupping my chin in his hands gently, trying to direct my face to his. I stare at the floor and shake my head. “Please? Katherine?”

When he says my name, it’s so unexpected that my head jerks up. He reaches toward my face and I just close my eyes, allowing him to press the wet, cool facecloth to my skin. When I open my eyes again, he’s smiling. But not any smile I’ve ever seen in his limited repertoire of pleasant expressions. It’s shocking. And disarming. And sexy as hell.

Wait. What? Where the hell did that thought come from?

He’s gently leading me back into the bedroom. That’s when another fleeting thought hits me.

Is he trying to seduce me?

I mean, is it all that far out of the realm of possibility? He’s my professor, but he’s barely five years older than me. If he wasn’t such an uptight jerk so much of the time, I probably would have been considering the scenario sooner. In the end, he holds the covers up for me to climb under. Alone. And I’m not sure if I’m relieved or disappointed.

“Come,” he says quietly. “You’re beyond exhausted and far from well. I’m sorry I didn’t remember that myself.”

I slowly walk past him and slip under the blankets. He pulls them up to my chin and looks down at me. “I don’t, you know.”

“Don’t what?” I ask, already feeling the heavy pull of my eyelids.

“I don’t hate you, Katherine.”

No more pulling. My eyes fly open like a pair of shades snapping up to the top of a window.

“Excuse me?” my voice is barely a whisper.

He sits next to me on the edge of the bed.

“When you were delirious—with the fever? You apologized. You said you were sorry for whatever you did to make me hate you. I don’t hate you, Katherine. I never have.”

I feel my face grow hot, though not from the fever this time. I don’t want to believe him, but there’s no reason for him to make up something like that. And it does sound like something ripped right out of my subconscious. I stare at him in horrified silence.

“Can I show you something?” he asks. When I nod dumbly, he pulls his phone from his pocket, pokes at the screen a few times, and turns it around for me to see.

I’m looking at a picture of a woman sitting on the front steps of this house. It must be summer because she’s wearing what looks to be a yellow sundress. Her hair is dark and it falls in long waves down and around her shoulders. Her eyes are bright blue and her smile is wide and easy. And, if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear that she and I were related.

“Who—who is that?” I ask in a shaky voice, though I have a feeling I might already know.

“That’s Casey. We had just moved into this house that summer.”

I stare back at the screen and then up at him again.

“Anyway,” he continues, “you might have noticed that you bear a striking resemblance to her. I…I think that’s why I have such a hard time with you in my classes. When you were a freshman, she had just…well, she was gone and I was so angry. I’m still angry,” he admits. “And I’m so sorry that I took that out on you.”

“It’s been a long time,” I say slowly. “Are you…have you two…?”

His brows knit together in apparent confusion.

“I mean, did she marry someone else or something?”

He’s staring at me so intently that I think I’ve pissed him off again. He opens his mouth to say something, then closes it. Finally, he closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and tries again.

“Katherine, what do you think happened to my fiancée?”

I shrug. “I heard you had a bad breakup. I just assumed that’s why sometimes you seem so—” I stop short. Not because I’m afraid to offend him anymore, but because he staring at me with wide, disbelieving eyes. Shit. Something’s very wrong here.

“Who told you that?” he demands.

“Well, uh, I’d hear other students talking about it—about you—in class.” I shake my head. “You know it’s amazing the things people will say in front of you when they don’t like you. It’s like I cease to exist because they don’t want to see me…” I can see he’s not interested in my little digression so I get back to his question. “Um, yeah, so I would hear people commenting on it all the time back then. Ugly breakup. She left you heartbroken. That kind of thing.”